"Investors need to understand the growing risks of overplaying the defense card," writes...

"Investors need to understand the growing risks of overplaying the defense card," writes AllianceBernstein's Joe Paul, exploring whether high-yield stocks are in bubble territory. It's not news they're expensive compared to past metrics, but high-yielders now make up a record 44% of the S&P 500 (on a cap-weighted basis). "As a countermeasure, (investors) may want to add more cyclical, deeper-value names."

Paul defines high-yield as 20% more than the index, which means high-yield is about 2.5%. Not exactly what many investors focusing on dividends would view as high-yield. In fact, many of us have a 3.0% minimum requirement.